I believe!

OER

Well, well, I am quite the fan of free content.  As a teacher I have constantly used the internet as a great Open Educational Resource  and honestly I have had to hunt and peck through different sites that have what I want and need to get the job done.  These are great, though I think I was using some without realizing it, I know find myself with a world more of educational help at my hands.   In 7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resource, it is stated,

"The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. OER typically refers to electronic resources, including those in multimedia formats, and such materials are generally released under a Creative Commons or similar license that supports open or nearly open use of the content."

So with the aforementioned definition I will support that some of the sites like History.com are OER even though they do not taught themselves as such.  I have used this cite to exhaustion and will continue use it, as i will also start to tackle some of the new places I have found.  The one that gets mentioned in the article " is the OpenCourseWare project from MIT, which began in 2002 and today features all of the course materials from roughly 2,000 MIT courses."  I like it, its nice, but the one I am falling in love with is the OER Commons, it has several materials I will be using in the near future I feel.

First is the History in the Raw which tackles primary sources for the students and helps the teacher in finding more to use in the class room.

Second is the Bridging World History  which literally gives me social studies teacher butterflies.  It has audio files for listening, which will be fantastic for adaptations, as well as having reading and deeper information for the teacher and student.

Third is the US History Source Book. This is basically a text book.  I find this to be a great idea and better then some of the other sources I have seen online.

With finding out about these OER's I went and found a few more.  The first one I found both surprised me and did not surprise me at the same time.  It can be found on Facebook as a Facebook OER page.  Though several of the places we have discussed and will go over, I feel, are quite vetted this one I suggest being careful with.  As with all of these you must watch how you are using them and make sure they are valid with your classroom, this one will need to be double checked, but with the people all actively attached to it you should find anything that you do need or get immediate support in times of need.  As I mentioned before, History.com is a great source with tons of videos and readings to use in the class room.  With most of these having been professionally produced, and having experts in them I feel this is a great resource you just have to dig in it a bit. As it is everywhere, I was not surprised that Google had also jumped into the OER area with its Google in Education.  This is a good site with lots of support for both teachers and students.  Though this seems to be mainly directed at their own products, it is Google and will mainly be what you are using for finding other sources or resources.  

I like these and this idea in general.  If you get stuck with one of these or need help finding more look at this SITE, it has 80 different OER sites to help you.  If you cannot find it here, then you are prolly not hooked up to the net.

Flipping the class over.

Flipping the class seems to be growing in popularity, but it is one that I am slightly unsure of.  I feel that if done well and properly it will be a great tool for learning.  Though I feel that if done poorly it will fall into the trap of being a scapegoat for poor teaching.

This is a great idea for students and teachers.  This form of teaching has quite a lot of backing in and among the teacher types that I am seeing advocate it.  There are even those going so far as to say doing it is good and when doing it for the wrong reasons what said reasons are.  Of course the greatest thing about this is that it facilitates learning in a whole new way.  It engages students and gets rid of discipline problems. It is a whole new way of interacting with students and teachers.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of unbiased thought.  Even in some of the pages that are advocating the flipped class room I do not see unbiased information, the negatives, or as in this page, the What the Flipped Classroom Is Not, are all based toward supporting that you should do the flipped classroom.  Though the one that worries me the most is, this, the flipped classroom will support and help youths with the ability and drive to do it thrive and grow.  As was told to me by a Professor when I was placed at my current field placement, anyone can teach smart hard working kids.  That is were I see this type of class and style of classroom management failing.  When you have a room full of kids that are not willing to read a short excerpt about something because they are used to skimming, or just plain do not want to read or do home work, how do you get them to take time out to learn an entire lesson?  This question really is what makes me worry about the flipped classroom.

This video goes a long way to answering some problems. 

There are many sources and places to get information out there.  The links I posted above are a great start and this one is a forum for discussion.

I guess for me, and where I sit on this topic is: Open to the thought and hopeful, but I remain to be convinced.

Highly impressed with my group.

I am highly impressed with the project group I had in my tech and teach class the other day.  Not only were they pretty darn good about getting it all done, but they were able to get the power point made when I was not feeling well and had to beg off one of our meetings.  I was worried that with lowerclassmen they would not want, or know how to, get the job done and they were on the spot all over getting it done.  I am impressed and feel I made a couple of friends!!!!! GOOD JOB GUYS!!!!

Powerpoint!!!! First time and all.

Well, I have never had to do a powerpoint before.  It turns out, that my oratory power is such that I am able to hold a class rooms attention without the need of the power point.  I feel that this is a crutch that I have leaned on my entire college career, to be honest.  I was both excited and nervous about doing the powerpoint for class, because a) I had never done one before, and b) I picked a fairly hard lesson style to do with it.  I think I pulled it off well, though my style of teaching will benefit from powerpoint being a supporting feature and not the main feature.

Matthew

Two more into the breach (for the blog roll)

I am not a personal fan of adding content to be adding content but, both of these sights seem to hold content that will help me in my future as a teacher.

Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog  Which is about a teacher and her class room.  The favorite part for me is the diverse strategies and techniques she uses while teaching.

Docere Est Discere  This one strikes much closer to home for me due to the fact that it is a blog about student teaching.

As I said I am not a fan of content for contents sake.  These blogs will take time to dig through and though they seem well put together, they help illistrate the problem with this; in that many of the blogs are just peoples opinions put on the web.  So a careful eye must always be held when looking at these.

Tech, Teaching, and Beliefs

The tech of today is advancing at such a rapid pace that I really wonder exactly how different the world of the student will be in years to come.  I personally when in school, years ago, did not get a calculator to do problems, and i mean one of the basic ones, not one of those that looks like a brick.  In today's classes calculators are mandatory and every mobile or electronic device has a calculator on it.   Most of those same devices can access the internet for instant acquisition  of new knowledge.  This is a great thing, this is also a bit of a dangerous thing.  Before I feel we were taught to find some of this to look it up and to make leaps of thought to get what we needed.  Now with certain "KEYWORDS" anyone can grab knowledge on a subject that would in the past be possibly hard to find or just not available.

So with all this tech and the rate of it advancing how do we handle this in the school?  I think that question is probably one of the most important ones to be asked by most everyone teaching today.  I have read several books on my laptop and ipad.  I am currently composing this on my laptop.  Something I would not have dreamed of having 10 years ago.  Despite having found joy and acceptance with the ipad type books and books on the computer, I am very much (when doing research) a fan of having the paper product in my hand.  I find that going over pdf's and things for information sometimes to be very unwieldy and time consuming.

I think some of this might be a bit of age and unwillingness to change but I really like paper books,  BUT I also dearly love the internet and the ability that it gives me to grab information almost instantly.

Matthew